Sunday, March 06, 2016

Chimps and religion?

Excerpt from Escaping the Progress Trap:
As we step through evolutionary development we can go much farther back on the timeline than Gilgamesh, to see how homo sapiens may have coped with disorientation brought on by new phenomena. One notices a trend in the growth of rituals that became accepted as religion. In Lost Gods1 John Allegro notes Jane Goodall's description of the chimpanzees' dance of defiant affirmation on the outbreak of a thunderstorm, as an indication of early religious ritual. He quotes it in detail:

..the storm broke. The rain was torrential and the sudden clap of thunder, right overhead, made me jump. As if this were a signal, one of the big males stood upright and as he swayed and swaggered rhythmically from foot to foot I could just hear the rising crescendo of his pant-hoots above the beating of the rain. Then he charged off...two other males charged after him. One broke off a low branch from a tree as he ran and brandished it in the air before hurling it ahead of him...With a display of strength and vigor such as this, primitive man himself might have challenged the elements. 2
(In the Shadow of Man, p. 52.)

In human history the anger of the gods would customarily be appeased by sacrificial rituals whose dual purpose was to relieve tension and solve the problem at hand, whether it was a stubborn disease or a dry spell. These evolved into the theatre of tragedy and comic relief, the simulated sacrifice in Christian churches, and later into psychiatry, counselling, and therapy. Cinema and television have taken over much of the earlier role of live theatre. The purpose of catharsis is to not only relieve tension (or purge the emotions, in Aristotle's definition) but to enable the nervous system's re-engagement of mind and senses, after which we act with a fresh outlook. We get a new perspective on life. Most of us have experienced the emotional readjustment that follows a harrowing experience. Real life drama and the enacted simulation can both have this effect. Closure is the term often used today, and reaching it requires the assistance of a professional therapist.3